Administrators vowed this week to crack down on students who participate in an annual food fight at Downey High School, after a pelting match last week erupted into a brawl. Police officers were called to break up the incident in which about 150 to 200 students were lobbing soda cans, burritos, ice, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, ketchup, mustard and paint at each other, officials said. "It was raining bananas," said freshman Janane Henderson, 15. "I saw eggs flying."

Students at Calabasas High School waged a ferocious food fight on campus for two weeks. But they weren't throwing food. They were collecting it to see who could gather the most items for the needy. The friendly rivalry has become a tradition for students and their homeroom teachers, who face off each year to see whose students can collect the most food, said Jonathan Oringher, a senior. Teachers go all out to win the competition, which this year lasted from Dec. 5 to 15, Jonathan said.

In the past year, the international melee over genetically modified crops has begun to resemble a college-fraternity food fight, with tomatoes, chicken wings and mashed potatoes flying in all directions. Unfortunately, many participants have made lots of noise but little sense. The debate has now come to the United States from Europe and is growing so tempestuous it threatens to forestall any hope of a reasoned approach to the problem.

Maybe former California basketball coach Todd Bozeman had to choke down too many ham-on-rye sandwiches during his eight-year ban from coaching. Or maybe he was still seething from the turkey he had witnessed, his Morgan State team having blown a 10-point lead in a loss to Longwood University. Whatever the reason, Bozeman found himself in a pickle last weekend. On a postgame food run, Bozeman threw a Bob Knight-like hissy fit at a restaurant in Farmville, Va.

April 2, 2000 | DAN GLICKMAN, Dan Glickman is the U.S. secretary of Agriculture

Opponents of biotechnology have raised some legitimate concerns. In doing so, however, they have often employed guerrilla tactics and outlandish rhetoric. Instead of educating people, they have merely exploited the public's limited knowledge about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Some biotech foes have vandalized fields of genetically modified crops, destroying test plots, while they criticize industry for insufficient field testing.

Grocery wars can bury innocent victims. Pull off the freeway into a Camino de Estrella shopping center where a closed Alpha Beta forced Popeye's for Hair to trim the price of a cut by 25%. A few steps away is an empty space that once housed the Golden Comb, a salon that catered to older women. The Jim's Pharmacy has also closed. And a Bank of America branch is soon to follow. With the anchor grocery store site empty, foot traffic past the small shops in the center plummeted. Sales followed.

Administrators vowed this week to crack down on students who participate in an annual food fight at Downey High School, after a pelting match last week erupted into a brawl. Police officers were called to break up the incident in which about 150 to 200 students were lobbing soda cans, burritos, ice, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, ketchup, mustard and paint at each other, officials said. "It was raining bananas," said freshman Janane Henderson, 15. "I saw eggs flying."

Holden Caulfield stood up at Dodger Stadium on Saturday and swore an oath about "deciding in your youth on a policy of truth." But Holden came in the guise of Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan, a center fielder in the wry. In the first of two sold-out shows at the stadium, Gahan danced exuberantly to dark-toned music amid stage smoke and flashy lighting, stating his pledge in front of about 50,000 screaming fans. An incongruous setting for such a personal--if universal--act of expression? Perhaps.

Refrigerated trucks trundle down the pretty country lanes laden with pale, doughy masses of fungus -- 32 tons or more a day. "Pure mycoprotein -- good enough to eat, won't taste of anything, very bland," declares manufacturing manager Pete Willis, tearing off a golf-ball-sized sample from a 2,000-pound glob. Workers in white boots shepherd the fungal paste through a sea of vats and clanking machines that mix, press, slice and dice the raw dough.

For Andrea Bonati, producing Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is more than a profession. "When I was a kid, I used to steal it from where my mother kept it," he says of the cheese better known around the world as Parmesan. "It's an addiction. It starts running in your blood. It's something that deeply affects the feelings of the people who make it. Once you start, you can't stop." But there are two kinds of "Parmesan" in this world.